Glitch Image Maker

Glitch art imitates the way digital pictures break: colour channels drift apart, rows of pixels slide sideways, bright areas smear into sorted streaks, and damaged JPEG data produces blocky colour errors. This maker applies all of those effects to your images, each with its own strength. A random seed makes every result repeatable, so you can tweak one setting without losing a glitch you like. It runs in your browser and handles several images at once.

How to use this tool

1. Choose one or more images.
2. Set the RGB split and the number and size of shifted slices.
3. Optionally turn on pixel sorting, JPEG corruption, scan lines and noise.
4. Change the seed until you like the pattern; the same seed always gives the same result.
5. Download PNG (exact) or JPG (smaller).

Formula

RGB split: R′(x) = R(x − d), B′(x) = B(x + d) · scan lines: value × (1 − strength) on the second half of each period

Effects run in order: slices, RGB split, pixel sorting, JPEG corruption, scan lines, noise. Slices are up to 8% of the height each and move by up to the chosen percentage of the width, wrapping around. Pixel sorting finds runs of pixels whose brightness (0.299R + 0.587G + 0.114B) is at or above the threshold and sorts each run from dark to bright. The scan-line period is 2 px per 540 px of height. JPEG corruption changes up to 40 bytes after the start-of-scan marker and retries until the browser can still decode the file. Transparent areas stay transparent in PNG output (the corruption runs on a copy over white, then the transparency is put back); JPG output places them on white.

Example

With an 8 px RGB split, a white line on black becomes a red edge on its right and a blue edge on its left, each 8 px wide, with white only where the copies overlap. On a 1080 px tall photo the scan-line period is 2 × round(1080 ÷ 540) = 4 px: two normal rows, then two darkened rows, repeated.